The Brazilian wave came, covered over
America – and the rest of the world – and went down indelibly in history. With
some of us the splash never went back out to sea and Rio has been welcomed as
our musical sister city as with many successive generations just now
discovering the Bossa Nova. Thanks to the pearls of the idiom we are left with
the legacies of Jobim and Chico Barque and Veniceus de Morias and all the
spawning via voices and instruments since that wave inundated our musical
“joy-spot” of heart.

Ed Vodicka was there to ride that
wave at its peak and we are grateful that he never put down his musical
surfboard. In this album of classic Bossa Nova we can hear the “sit back and
just happily listen” or we, especially the “musicicalians” among us, can dig in
for the fine points of performance. In
either case this is an album to be carried to that island we want to be alone
on,-- maybe with some Tequila and Sinatra as well.

A playing of the Bossa Nova requires
drive if it’s going to work and that’s exactly what we feel about these musical
revisits. Perfection comes to mind not only in the form and substance
(selectivity) of these definitive Brazilian works but in a basic element
today’s corporate robotic engineers fail to hear and feel in order to bear down
and deliver “the overall as well as the bottom line” of the sensitive recording
artist. Best said would make it “creativity vs. productivity”. Ed Vodicka is a
creator of music first and foremost and the recordings and performances all
fall in line behind his God given talent to create and offer it to the world.

To
specifically comment on each and every song of the Album would be like judging
the power of each wave as it thunders in and ebbs. With the familiarity of the genre
we are left at the onset with an expectation tantamount to comparisons and testing.
The missing ingredient amidst the plethora of mediocre record productions sessions is an ingredient,
--actually “the ingredient”, -- that separates the factors of artistic creation
vs. the assembly line production process.
This is resounding in Ed Vodicka’s “Sixties Retro Blame It On The Bossa Nova” tribute of musical love; the ingredient is “devotion”.

In
order to override the commentary of opinion in the backlash of that same wave
recovering the sands of musical time Ed supplied the missing ingredient
“Devotion” and that is to the genre of the The Bossa Nova” surfing right along
with his indubitably outstanding level of musicianship.

Consider
the idiom of each and every meticulously weighed tempo and arrangement on this
historical album as the vehicle for impeccably performed monuments of The Bossa
Nova expression. It is as though Ed Vodicka has a musical magic carpet with his creative talents primed for the diaspora of flight. It’s his “Devotion”
that is the secret to its intricate musical weave.